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Y2K: Failures to continue throughout 2000

by Jo Pettitt, VNU Newswire

Corporations are not making sufficient Year 2000 contingency plans, research company Gartner Group has warned.

The company, which published the last of its worldwide Y2K status reports late yesterday, said that many corporations are only creating contingency plans covering New Year’s Eve 1999 and the first couple of weeks of 2000.

However, Gartner research director Lou Marcoccio said that failures resulting from Y2K problems would begin in the first quarter of this year and continue well into the third quarter of 2000.

"When we get to the fourth quarter this year, failures will increase in numbers each month leading up to January 2000 and they will continue to occur throughout the year and will not drop off substantially until at least Q3."

He said one of the reasons for this is the increased number of transactions that will begin in the last quarter of this year.

"Computers fail when transactions are run and we will have around 800 times more transactions run in the fourth quarter that will be changing dates than in any other quarter this year,” said Marcoccio.

He also said that any remaining problems after remediation within a company’s computer system will take at least a year to cleanse. "Companies don’t go through a full cycle of transactions until a full year is complete."

Marcoccio also warned that some commercial software might also be non-compliant.

“Some commercial software, which was confirmed as compliant, the next version has turned out to be non compliant. This affects around 11 per cent of all commercial software,” he said.